Unacceptable
by Animom
Summary: Forgiveness? Understanding? Screw that! As far as Honda is concerned, retribution is what a psycho like Marik deserves. ** Rated for coarse language and violence. YuGiOh FanFiction Contest, Season 8 round 8, Bananshipping (Honda&Marik) NO PAIRING.


Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

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Description: Forgiveness? Understanding? Screw that. _Retribution_ is what's needed.

Prompted by Round 8 of Season 8 of the FFnet Fanfiction Contest, **Bananashipping (Honda/Marik)**.

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**Unacceptable**

_by Animom_

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There was no way to shrug it off. The anger that had collected steadily all though Battle City – from Bandit Keith almost killing Yugi to seeing his friends cheated, kidnapped, mind controlled, and then almost killed again – had doubled when he found out that that their new buddy "Namu" was behind it all, a puppetmaster pulling every string and jerking every chain. When Honda thought of how many times Marik must have laughed at them in secret for being so trusting, so stupid, he had wanted to beat the crap out of the smug bastard right then, but by the time they'd got Rishid to the medical bay after his duel with Jounouchi, Marik had disappeared.

"He should be here," he'd hissed to Jou. "It's his _brother!"_

And then, as if all the crap that had happened already wasn't enough, as if there wasn't already _plenty_ of justification to beat that girly pointy tan face to a pulp, there was the fact that for the rest of the tournament Marik had supposedly "turned into" Dark Half, the fucking psycho sadist that got off on torturing people. Mai and Jounouchi and Yugi. Honda hadn't believed the _"he didn't know what he was doing"_ story for a minute, and didn't understand how the others had bought it so quickly. They acted like Marik was blameless for what happened in those Shadow Games, as if surrendering at the end of his duel with Yugi, and handing over his God card and the Rod and the Ring, somehow freed him from taking responsibility for the pain he caused. Yeah, so he had some pictures carved on his back. _Big deal. _It was the kind of thing that made Honda seethe, seeing douchebags and perverts get off the hook through one of the standard cop-outs: _I had an unhappy childhood. My parents never said they loved me. Television shows made me do it. Twinkies made me do it. I was bored and no one stopped me._

Such amazing bullshit. Well, it was clearly up to Honda to even the score on the universe's behalf, because karma wasn't always reliable.

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It would have been fine if Kaiba hadn't screwed everything up, blowing up the island like a big sulky baby, because in all the confusion of hurrying back to the Battle Ship, checking on Mai, tracking down Ryou, chasing after the idiot Kaiba brothers, and then transferring to the helicopter, there just hadn't been an opening.

The Ishtars had already been sitting in the back half of the transport when Honda and the others boarded. Just before he sat down, Honda had caught Marik's eye, and the Egyptian's faint _"Look what I got away with!"_ smile had faded. Fear had bloomed in the lavender eyes, fear and guilt.

Honda thought it looked good on him.

On the Domino dock everyone was all smiles, and Honda forced his face into a smile too. "See you, Marik," he'd said cheerfully, waving, and almost laughed at how the other boy tensed up after that, the darting, timid glances he gave Honda as he boarded the boat with his big brother and sister.

Honda kept smiling his biggest smile. _Oh, I'm not coming after you now, you little sack of shit, but feel free to piss your pants worrying about it 'til I do._

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~:~

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It was one thing to fantasize about revenge. Actually carrying it out – well, that wasn't so easy, especially when your target lived a quarter of the globe away. So he stewed and he steamed, and he began to wonder how he was going to manage it, and then he found the anger slipping away little by little … He might have lost it entirely, if it hadn't been for DOMA. When he saw what being tortured by Dark Half had done to Mai, and how Mai's being so messed up made Jou so nuts that he lost his soul trying to help her – well, that charged his righteous fury right back up.

He managed to put the call in to Pegasus during a break in the Grand Prix. Enduring the wacky artist's constant use of "Honda-boy" and fractured expressions was well worth the payoff: by the time he got back to Japan his pre-paid first-class ticket to Egypt was waiting for him.

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"It is very kind of you to visit," Ishizu said, ushering him down a hallway and out onto a tiny, dusty courtyard at the center of the surprisingly small Ishtar home. "He's been so depressed since we got back from Japan. I can barely get him to leave his room." She pressed her hands together, and Honda noticed the dark circles under her eyes, the worry lines. "I'm sure he'll be happy to see a friendly face."

_Don't count on it._

Ishizu went back into the house, her slippers whispering on the hard-packed earth as she left. Honda looked around the courtyard, but the sight of the fake stone urns – with their dark, just-from-the-bag soil so carefully tamped around painfully small plants – bothered him for some reason, adding to the leaden knot of tension in his belly. Coming here had seemed like a such good idea back in Domino, but now that he had actually _flown_ to a foreign country to attack one of its citizens … No. He couldn't back out now. What kind of friend would he be to Jou, to Mai, to Yugi, if he didn't deliver some payback on their behalf?

After a few minutes he saw the curtain of one of the windows facing the courtyard twitch, but only once. He rolled his shoulders to loosen up his muscles when he heard Ishizu's voice approaching the courtyard again.

"Here you are," she said, walking out into the sun. "Shall I bring out something for you two to drink while you visit?"

Marik had stopped in the doorway when he saw Honda, his eyes going wide.

"That would be great, Miss Ishtar," Honda said politely.

Marik walked out as his sister left, his fists half-clenched. Honda knew better then to underestimate him – despite the filmy cotton shirt and harem pants, Mark's build was clearly not that of a weakling.

"So …" Honda said.

"I know why you're here," Marik said.

"Oh?" Honda folded his arms, took a few steps toward Marik. "Do tell."

"You're angry because of what happened during Battle City. You think I ought to be punished."

"Do I?"

"Of course you do." Marik walked closer to him. "I hurt your friends. You've come to beat me up, to make you feel better." His face was solemn, blank.

Honda was surprised. He'd expected Marik to run, to beg, to call for his big brother – or to fight dirty.

He hadn't expected – _this._

Marik was less than an arm's-length away now. "'Go ahead. Hit me." This close, his eyes were dark, almost amethyst. His expression shifted, became sly, almost mocking. "Or are you afraid to do anything without your girlfriend Jounouchi here to back you up?" he asked.

Honda literally felt his jaw drop as he gaped at Marik. "What did you say?"

"I had a lot of fun with him that day on the dock," Marik said. "He did _everything_ I asked him to." Marik licked his lips. "He's very _talented_."

Honda punched Marik square in the gut, and was satisfied to see him bend over, almost in half.

"There we go." Gasping, his hands on his knees, Marik looked up at Honda through his bleached-blond hair. "And that sister of his with the big soft titties? It's really too bad I never got the chance to play with _her."_

Honda grabbed a handful of Marik's hair, yanked him upright, and then hit him in the face, three fast blows that drew blood from nose and lip. When he let go, Marik staggered back a few steps.

"Oh, did I touch a nerve?" Marik swiped at his face with his arm, the blood leaving a long pink streak on his sleeve. "Maybe some day you can get both of them in bed with you, and have a _real_ party." He grinned, smears of blood making his teeth red. "That is, if they let you do more than just watch them screw – "

At that, Honda roared and ran at Marik, knocking him to the ground and then sitting on him, so enraged that nothing existed except his fist and Marik's face, feeling a solid, satisfying _ka-ching_ every time his knuckles hit flesh, over and over and over.

The sound of running feet, of Ishizu screaming, brought him out of it. He looked up just as heaver footsteps resolved out of the shadows: Rishid.

Marik shouted something that Honda didn't understand, some angry words probably in Egyptian, and to Honda's amazement all Rishid did was hold a struggling Ishizu back as she sobbed, "What good does this do? Does it take the pain away?"

Honda looked down at Marik. Blood oozed from his nose, from the corner of his mouth, from the places on his cheek where Honda's ring had gashed him. One eye was swelling, already half shut.

"Is that all you got?" Marik said, his words slurred through his cut and swollen lips. "How weak. No wonder you couldn't protect them."

Honda snarled, drew back his fist to hit Marik again – and then noticed the eyes. Pale now, almost colorless.

Pleading.

And then it struck him: Marik had said all those things hoping that Honda would lose his temper, hoping that Honda would lash out, because … he wanted to be beaten. He _needed_ to be beaten. Where Dark Half had been a sadist, Marik was – a masochist?

_If that's true, he'll be more miserable if I _don't_ hit him than if I do_, Honda thought. He let go of Marik's shirt and stood up, shuddering with disgust. _And speaking of sadists, I'm as bad as his Dark Half was,_ he thought. _I've been in a lot of fights, but I've never before kept on hitting someone who wasn't hitting back._

Marik clutched at Honda's pant leg. "Why did you stop?" he asked, his voice a croak. "You have to hurt me, because I hurt them, and I don't have any other way to make up for it."

Honda grabbed Marik's arm and pulled him to his feet, finally understanding. Marik wasn't a masochist; he was more a guy who had to live with the knowledge that he'd destroyed minds, destroyed lives ... and because he maybe was a pretty decent person underneath it all, the knowledge was eating him alive.

That couldn't be much fun.

"Please," Marik whispered, putting his hands on Honda's shoulders, sagging against him. "I deserve your hate. I want to die."

Honda looked over Marik's shoulder at Rishid, who was watching them steadily. When Rishid nodded, once, Honda said, "No," and brought his knee up hard.

Ishizu ran to her brother, who was curled on his side, retching weakly.

"Marik," Honda said. "You have to live with what you did, because that'll be more punishment than anyone could ever give you." He walked away from Marik to the doorway; Rishid silently let him pass.

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~:~

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When the four of them flew to Egypt to finally get the other Yugi's memories back, no one seemed to find it odd that Honda already knew where everything was at the Cairo airport. Which was a relief: now that the four of them were on an adventure that didn't include torture or robot monkeys or the end of the world, Honda felt relaxed and ready to enjoy himself,

Until the Ishtars showed up. His first thought was that they had come to have him arrested, but oddly neither Ishizu nor Rishid nor Marik paid any attention to him. As Ishizu talked to Yugi Honda noticed that the dark circles under her eyes were gone, and the worry lines too. He glanced at Rishid, but like Marik his attention was on Yugi – well, the pharaoh.

As they walked out of the airport and through the shimmering heat to where the jeeps were parked, Honda hung back. Jounouchi ran ahead, jumping into and sprawling across the backseat of one jeep while Ishizu, Anzu, and Yugi took the other.

Honda gulped and looked across the roof of the jeep at Marik and Rishid, who stood talking quietly until Rishid walked around the jeep and got behind the wheel.

"Thanks for helping me out, Honda," Marik said. He seemed sincere.

"I don't see how – "

"You taught me that the right thing to do is to carry the burden of what I did, and let that push me to be a better person." Marik looked down. "Trying to get other people to punish me – that's as bad as pretending that none of those things happened at all."

"Not really," Honda said. "Denying it wouldn't even be in the same ball park of bad."

Rishid started the jeep.

"Well, I guess we better get going," Marik said with a shy smile.

"Yeah." Honda felt – almost squared away.

"Honda?" Marik said. "Thanks again for being so honest."

"Sure thing," Honda replied, opening the door of the jeep and squeezing his tall frame into the back seat, shoving over a protesting Jounouchi as Marik got into the front seat next to Rishid. "That's what friends are for."

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~ The End ~

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**Author's Notes**

A big thank you, as always, to my beta **Rroselavy.**

Thanks also to **Lady Blackwell** for helping me find the fight scene I wanted to use as a reference for the pummeling, and to my family for allowing me to stay in The Crabby Zone while writing this. ~

I enjoy writing Honda, because I can connect to him, but Marik has never been _there _for me, so this characterization of him is most likely absolutely horrible. (I almost feel as though I've inadvertently bashed him in this fic by entirely missing the point of his character and what makes him tick, but hopefully I'll never have to write him again. :p)

It plays a little looser with anime canon/continuity (and plausibility) than I'd like, but it is what it is.

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24 dec 2010 ~ initial idea

(07) 4 jan 2011 ~ juggle lines in pummeling


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